As live-in faculty members in SMU’s Residential Commons, Faculty in Residence (FiRs) serve as the intellectual leaders of their commons. The FiR program creates opportunities for students to know faculty members outside of the classroom and emphasizes a culture of mentorship, intellectual discourse and community.

The student Residential Commons Leadership Corps also is blogging at http://blog.smu.edu/studentadventures/category/smu-residential-commons-leadership-corps/

Getting Ready to Move “Stuff” (Yow!)

An update from Dr. Tom Tunks, Faculty in Residence (FiR) for the Ware Commons:

For the past several years I have spent most SMU spring break weeks on Alternative Break trips with students. Great trips have included Taos, NM; the Snowbird Cherokee reservation on the Tennessee-North Carolina border; Xalapa, Mexico; and two times to Quito, Ecuador. Not this spring, though! Next week Jeanne and I will devote most of our time to readying our house and belongings for our big move to the SMU campus.

Our move is (will be) multidimensional. For the three years we expect to live in Ware Commons (great new name!!!), our elder son, Adam; daughter-in-law, Catherine; and grandson, Jeremy (group pictured here), will occupy our house. It will be theirs totally, including all their “stuff.” That means most of our “stuff” will leave – either to go to our Ware (love using that name) apartment or to go into storage. Their house in Garland will go on the market this week, and when (not if) it closes they will move into our house with us. Because our scheduled move-in to the Ware apartment will probably be the first week of August, we will have two sets of people and two sets of “stuff” in the house for some amount of time.

The people part, we expect, will be easy – we all get along quite well and are respectful of each others’ needs and sensitivities. Besides, Jeanne and I will be traveling quite a bit in the early summer (much to everyone else’s relief, I would think). The “stuff” part involves some logistic problem-solving. When their house closes their “stuff” will come here. Some of our “stuff” will remain upstairs; just enough to satisfy our daily living needs. Anything else, such as living room furniture, extra (off-season) clothes, etc., will go into storage for anywhere up to four months of time. Of course, any overage of “stuff” that we won’t move to Ware will need to be in storage, probably for the next three years, after which we will re-occupy the house. Ah, the decisions about how much, and exactly what, to take.

We do look upon this as an adventure, as well as a great time to unload “stuff” that has been collecting unnecessarily for the 34 years we’ve lived in this house. For both our time in the Ware apartment and our time after returning to the house, we expect to be living leaner and cleaner. In fact, in our collective memory, some of our happiest times through the years have been times (either before we had collected much or when we lived elsewhere on leave or vacation) when we haven’t had much “stuff” to keep track of or defend. To us, life is far more about people and experiences than about “stuff.”